


Try and Hear Me Then I'm Done

by orphan_account, ResplendentRi



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: In which almost everybody is a ghost or a medium, M/M, More characters to be added as they appear - Freeform, Murdered: Soul Suspect AU, and the murders are pretty messed up, instead of just being mentioned, not technically psychoteeth even though there is a serial killer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2596799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ResplendentRi/pseuds/ResplendentRi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan Haywood was a mild-mannered grad student/TA who was madly in love with his younger boyfriend, Ray. "Was," until his perfect life came crashing down around him when Ray was caught in the crossfire of a deranged gunman on his way to lunch with him. Two years later, Ryan barely makes rent for a shitty, run-down apartment until one day he hears a scuffle in the apartment above his and finds himself facing down a serial killer. Now he's a ghost, and with help from Michael, a spitfire young Medium who's now the only living person who can see Ryan, he's determined to put together the pieces of the mystery so that he can finally find peace and see Ray again.<br/>A series of out-of-order short pieces and drabbles set in mine and Davie's Murdered: Soul Suspect AU, because linear storytelling is for nerds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Geoff I

Geoff had never considered himself a superstitious man. Despite his many years on the force, in the homicide division - or maybe because of it, who knew - he never really believed that there was a charm or a magic talisman that could protect you from death. There was no such thing as ghosts or demons, and anyone who claimed they had been possessed was probably just covering their own ass. Anyone could die at any moment, and...that was it. Game over.

Anyone who tried to say otherwise with any real certainty was a damn liar.

He'd never had anything against the mediums who sprang up all over Austin, despite all that. Early in his career, they were like a sideshow. Kids who knew a neat parlor trick. He knew the secret, they hook you with something like "Your grandma says hi," because a lot of people Geoff's age probably had a dead grandma, or they get something juicy out of you with "I can tell that you have an aura of loss around you..." until you were spilling your guts about Baron von Tunabreath, your cat who died when you were in fourth grade. It was harmless, and it made the people who sought it out feel better about themselves. Geoff was all for letting people relieve their personal demons.

He just leaned more toward a pleasantly full bottle, when it came to his own.

It had been two years since Geoff had been woken up at six am (an hour or two later than he usually managed to sleep) with a raging hangover, chalky residue on his clothes, and bloody scrapes on his palms, by his boss and his partner taking turns calling him to tell him to get his ass out to the old cemetery. Two years since he saw that giant angel statue toppled in jagged pieces on the ground, white stone dyed red with blood.

The boy pinned underneath it couldn't have been 15 yet (four weeks past his fourteenth birthday, they found out after he was identified), eyes wide and sightless. By the time Geoff got there, his body had already been frozen in its last throes, fingers curled rigidly around the heavy stone across his chest where he had tried to push its unforgiving weight off of him in his last moments. There was other evidence, footprints running toward the scene from the woods around the cemetery. A makeshift pyre in the woods, unused. Multiple lengths of cut rope that matched the friction burns that the boy (Miles Luna, his name was Miles Luna, Geoff refused to ever, ever forget that) had on his wrists.

More rope than it would have taken to bind _just_ Luna. A bottle of lighter fluid, unopened, the same kind that Geoff used. A set of smaller footprints running off in the opposite direction. There were clues all over the fucking place, but none of them had added up. They never found the other kid. They never found anything to incriminate a killer. Their best lead was a kid named Shawcross, but he dropped off the radar completely. The Luna case went cold after a couple of months, and the angel statue was replaced, and Geoff was disgusted not for the first time at how easy it was to erase all trace of the end of a life. Geoff had used alcohol as a balm for most of his time on the force, but something had rubbed him wrong about the Luna case from the start.

After it went cold, alcohol became a medicine.

For the first two weeks after his partner died (two weeks was all the time off they gave him, two weeks to grieve over the man who took a bullet in the heart for him), he drank like it was water.

As if he could ever forget the peaceful look on Jack's face, even as Geoff had knelt over him, hands pressed desperately to the wound that spurted blood through his fingers no matter how much pressure he applied. The utter lack of a pulse under his bloody palms. The way he went to the hospital and waited for news anyway, looking like a crime scene because he always had a nervous habit of running his hands through his hair, down his face, and he ended up covered in blood, Jack's blood, even though he knew before the bus even got there that Jack was gone.

When he came back to the station with an ungroomed two-week-old beard, he met his new partner. The kid's name was Caleb, a total rookie new to the division. He was a sweet kid, Geoff had made sure to tell Sergeant Hullum when he tendered his resignation just a week later. He just wasn't Jack, and he never would be, and Geoff liked all his coworkers and higher-ups too much to inflict on them the internal affairs nightmare it would cause if he straight up put a gun in his mouth one day because he was sick of trying to come to work like nothing was wrong.

Jack was a fucking stupid sentimental moron, but his smiling fucking bearded face and his dumbass laugh lit up Geoff's dreams on the rare nights he went to bed sober, just to torment him in the morning with the reminder that he'd never see or hear either one again. Geoff had trained Jack from a rookie, but unlike the other rookies he'd gone through in his career on the force, Jack stuck around. They were as inseparable as a married couple.

Hell, they practically _were_ a married couple, both of them too married to the force for dating.

The guy who shot Jack (Jack and some other kid, a civilian, a poor little thing who worked at Gamestop and got hit by a stray bullet on his way to have lunch with his boyfriend) swore up and down it wasn't him, he didn't do it. He'd never even held a gun before. But they had his prints on the weapon and eyewitness testimony, and the good old state of Texas never did have much fondness for cop-killers.

They found him hung in his holding cell the day before his trial, Burnie had told Geoff. Eyes bulging out of his purple face, with his bedsheets tied around his throat.

That was when Geoff stopped giving a shit about his old job. Six months later, he found a real estate listing for a bar with a studio apartment over it. He sold his house and took out a couple big loans to cover it, and he still wasn't sure what made him do it, but when Burnie and Gus called him crazy for doing it he flipped them the bird and told them to find him one profession better suited for a drunk.

It had been a little over a year when another medium turned up dead. It was all over the papers: **BRITISH MEDIUM LAST SEEN OUTSIDE HIS HOTEL** , the headlines read at first. Less than forty-eight hours later, a bloated body washed up on the bank of the river, wrists and ankles chafed raw from a rope burn. **FAMOUS MEDIUM GAVIN FREE FOUND IN RIVER** , the headlines declared, and Geoff tried desperately not to think about the case. It wasn't his job anymore, he told himself. He had nightmares about the Luna boy that night, about his last moments and the terror he must have felt being so close to escape. When he woke he could feel eyes on him, a feeling that he couldn't shake the whole next day.

A couple months later, Michael turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night.

"Kid, don't you know it's dangerous to go around trying to earn a merit badge after dark?" Geoff asked. He noticed the way the boy was gripping and twisting a beanie in his hands, glancing along the street instead of looking at him. He looked guilty as sin, Geoff thought.

"You've gotta hide me, please," he begged. "He's following me, he'll find me any minute."

"Whoa, wait, who's following you?" Geoff asked, putting his hands on the lad's shoulders. He pulled him inside the bar and locked the door again, cop instincts taking over.

"He's going to _kill_ me," he whispered. In the dim light of the bar, Geoff noticed his brown eyes wide with fear. A spike of protectiveness shot through him.

"Sshh, hey, calm down. Take a deep breath. Nobody's gonna kill you here. What's your name?"

"I'm Michael," he said. He finally stopped wringing his beanie in his hands and shoved it down over the mop of auburn curls that passed for hair.

"I'm Geoff," he said.

"Yeah, Detective Ramsey," Michael said. "You brought me in a couple times when I ran away from home. That's why I came here," he said, almost hesitantly. Geoff scrubbed a hand over his stubbled face. That was why he looked so familiar. The boy was a medium, who had made so many escape attempts from his foster home before he turned 18 that it was pretty much an annual occurrence. Geoff and Jack had been the only ones he would actually listen to, so eventually they were the first ones dispatched to find him. Geoff always liked the kid because unlike some mediums, he treated it more like a curse than a blessing. He never hawked fortunes on streetcorners or faked a seance for extra cash.

"You said if I ever needed help, to find you?" Geoff winced.

"Ki- Michael, I haven't been on the force for two years," he said.

"...I know," Michael said. He shot a glance at the window of the bar that Geoff didn't understand. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't really need your help." Geoff looked in his imploring brown eyes and heaved a sigh.

"Alright," he said. "Get your ass upstairs. I think it's technically illegal for you to be down here." Michael took the stairs up to the studio apartment two at a time. Geoff stopped in front of the bar, sighed, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey.

"Fuck it," he muttered. "I can mark it out."

It was going to be a long night.

 


	2. Jack I

Jack hates being stuck outside. It’s awful to know that all he can do is look in until they leave. He can’t move forward, he refuses to leave, and there’s nothing to do but watch and wait. Just like staking out. Those had run pretty smoothly once, when he was his partner’s defense from boredom. Then there had been jokes. Jokes, dumb questions, quiet conversations in the dead of night where neither of them could look at each other. It definitely made some of them more interesting. Nothing like talking about whether or not you’d totally agree to a blowjob in the back of a pre-used porn theater when neither of you can look at each other. It’d been one of the things that had made him and Geoff so close- having to know what your partner was really saying without being near them.

  


Their system worked. They worked like a well-oiled machine, and even if they fought there was never a time it got in the way of their work. Never. It’d been why Jack hadn’t been reassigned. He’d tried to get away once, after a full night on the town where he’d had to carry Geoff home and his partner had been rambling nonsense at him but clinging so tightly it nearly choked. This wasn’t healthy and it had to be stopped but Geoff wasn’t going to listen to him and the stress of it finally made him put in a transfer request a month before they found Luna. Burnie had turned it down with a knowing look and asked him to try, just for a little longer. The two of them had a long conversation after that, and by the end of it they both agreed it’d never happened. The request, the talk, that entire day. He’d gone back to protecting Geoff regretting ever having the thought to abandon the man. Not when he needed help.  


Geoff always needs help. No, that’s not right. That’s what Jack had told him the night he’d seen a gun aimed at his head. It’s not the truth though. The truth is that while Geoff needs to lay off the fucking alcohol already, he doesn’t need much help at all. Just a push to heal. One Jack can’t give him because he can’t so much as touch the door handle now. It burns when he tries. The windows aren’t any better and Jack can never go inside the house. Not anymore. Now Jack has to wait, watching self-destruction that he’s powerless against, and hope that Geoff’s strong enough to overcome it. He’s not sure if praying as a ghost is right, but he does anyways. Prays every damn night that he’ll be able to do something. In the mean time, he sends all the whispers he can through the cracks in the windows and hopes that Geoff can hear them.  


He knows that he should move on. That he should accept his death, leave the past behind him, and ignore all his regrets. Jack can’t. He should, but he can’t. Not when Geoff is still alive, trying so fucking hard. Not when he can still help in any sort of small way- a missing newspaper there, an extra coffee here, never letting Geoff leave the house alone, anything to keep him safe. It’s not his unfinished business though. That had been dying before he’d even had a chance to say it. Jack had always promised himself that he’d only bring it up then, on his death bed, because it didn’t have a place in his life otherwise. Didn’t have a right to bring it up and give Geoff another damn reason to drink. Maybe it’d been better he hadn’t had time before he’d died but God damn it, he just wanted to get to tell him once. That’d been what had trapped him here. Three words he hadn’t gotten out in time because he was too busy trying to making Geoff stop panicking. His unfinished business was the same it’d been in life- being unable to just tell him. Telling Burnie was easy. Telling Joel and Adam was easy. Fuck, even telling the new ghost- Ryan?- had been easy. If only telling Geoff could have been that easy.  


It’s not what he needs to think about right now, and it’s surprisingly easy to slip it to the back of his mind. After all, that’s Michael with Geoff. One of their repeat run aways, one Jack had always felt for. If it wasn’t for the fact that he knew Michael’s brother cared, he honestly would have filled out the adoption paperwork. The kid wasn’t bad, just a bit lost when it came to how to handle a lot of things. Watching the two of them talk without being able to hear them makes his mind wander. What would it have been like to be a father? What would Geoff had been like as a father? What would it have been like for Geoff and Jack to have raised Michael away from all of these ridiculous cases- some where in the country where they could have a little farm to themselves? It’s exactly the wrong type of thoughts to be having because both Michael and Geoff look stressed as fuck but it’s hard not to wonder what could have been.  


Being a ghost makes it so easy to slip into the what ifs. It’s hard to ignore all the regrets you’ve made, all the mistakes, all the wrong turns. Impossible not to wonder what life would have been like if you’d just avoided that bad prom date or that statue case. When Ryan and Michael leave, he waves to them and hopes that the kid is staying safe. As much as he doesn’t mind some company, Jack doesn’t want any of the ghostly kind of anyone he cares about for a long time to come.  


Now if only it’d worked out that way.


	3. Ryan I

Ryan loosened his tie with a heavy sigh, closing the door to his apartment behind him. He locked the door and pushed the deadbolt into place, before running his hand through his hair. It was about two thirty in the morning, and he'd just gotten home because one of the servers at the university library had decided to just give up entirely.

Dinner was a bowl of strawberry Mini-Wheats in front of PBS, while a documentary about an oil spill ate up the empty, ratings-less hours that for-profit TV stations sold to infomercials. It wasn't interesting, but it was about something other than codes and hardware, which the IT technician appreciated. He reached out to pick up his laptop off of the coffee table, but his appetite withered when he saw the box under the TV stand.

 _Xbox_ , it said on the side, but it may as well have said _Ray_. It was one of the few things that Ryan hadn't had the heart to get rid of or give away in the last two years. He'd tried everything over the years, he'd come so close to giving it up that he'd packed it up in a box, where it had stayed.

He'd tried playing it, once, back at the old place, but Ray's gamertag and avatar staring back at him from the account select screen had been too much. The nights he spent watching Ray beat a new game, or go back for 100% completion in an old favorite, playing local co-op and getting his ass handed to him, all of it was right there, in the console's memory. But it couldn't store the playfully-bet kisses, the warm weight of Ray settling in his lap with controller in hand, or the sound of his laugh.

Ryan couldn't remember what had compelled him to drag the box out of the closet where it had sat since he'd moved out of the apartment close to campus that he and Ray had shared ("Leave of absence," he'd called it at first, but after the first six months the university had called to see if he still had interest in continuing his degree, and three months after that he was up to his eyeballs in debt with nothing but a shitty IT job to ward off repossessors and Big Brother). But a couple days before, he'd moved it to right in front of the TV, where it belonged, he rationalized.

It was a little like trying to desensitize himself to its presence. Like if he kept it there in the box until it didn't pain him to notice it, then he could move on and take it out to put it on the shelf. He had done a good job in the past couple days not putting it back, but looking at it now he felt anger and frustration welling up inside him with how fucking _unfair_ it was.

He hadn't owned a console since he was a kid before Ray came along. He'd had a NES that had lasted him forever, but as soon as he'd discovered PC gaming that had been his scene. The keyboard and mouse had always been easier for him to master than a controller. And a master he was.

When he moved to Austin for grad school, he'd somehow found himself on the organizational committee for the campus-wide LAN war. He'd been the one to propose opening it up to non-students as well as students; a $10 charge at the door for non-students to help cover the cost of all the energy drinks and unhealthy snacks that the sponsorships they'd managed to snag couldn't quite cover. He'd been at the registration table when a shy boy in a grey hoodie had come up to the table with his hands in his pockets.

He'd introduced himself as Ray, as he sheepishly passed $10 in a five, three ones, and eight quarters over to Ryan. It wasn't love at first sight (Ryan was slightly annoyed at the quarters at first, to be honest), but by the end of the night he was well and truly smitten. Which, as it turned out, was a little bit of an ethical dilemma, since Ryan, who was almost 25 at the time, found out the morning after the LAN war when he took Ray out for pancakes that the wickedly smart, hilarious boy who had challenged him and made him laugh harder than he had in a long time was only a couple weeks past his 18th birthday.

_"What?" Ray asked around a mouthful of pancakes. "How old did you think I was?"_

_"At least 21," Ryan mumbled embarrassedly into his hands, face reddening all the way to his ears. "Christ, I'm surprised you didn't call Chris Hansen on me."_

_"If I didn't want you to flirt with me, I wouldn't have let you take me out for breakfast. ...How old are you?"_

_"...25." Ray choked, and had to take a swig of orange juice to get his breathing back under control._

_"Holy fuck, you're old."_

_"Thanks," Ryan drawled._

_"No, I thought you were like, maybe 22? You know, since you were running shit, I knew you were probably a student-"_

_"Grad student."_

_"...Ah. That explains it." Ray took another bite of his pancakes, waiting for Ryan to recover long enough to pull his face from his hands. "So, my mom's out of town. You wanna come over and play Xbox?"_

_"Jesus, Ray, you live with your mom?"_

_"It's cool, I don't actually sleep in a cradle," Ray quipped, and Ryan laughed despite himself._

"...I miss you so fucking much," Ryan whispered to the empty apartment, his voice cracking on the swear. "I'm sorry, Ray. I can't...I can't do it." He stood up and moved over to the box, standing over it for a moment before he stooped down to scoop the console into his arms. The weight was heavy and awkward in his grip, and he had to adjust his hold as he walked over to the hall closet, balancing the box on his hip to free up a hand so that he could open the door. His grip wobbled as he choked back a sob.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again, as he carefully hefted the box over his head to put it on the top shelf of the closet.

As he was about to give it the final push to get up on the top shelf, the door in the apartment above his slammed so hard that his own door rattled on its hinges, and the BANG was as loud as a gunshot, startling him. The box slipped and hit him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. It wasn't just the impact that knocked the wind out of him, as he scrambled to sit up, going through the box obsessively to make sure that nothing had been cracked or damaged. His sigh of relief when he found that no, nothing was damaged was short-lived when he heard the sound of another heavy bang from upstairs. He set the box with the console in it carefully on the floor, and stood up, reaching for the baseball bat that he kept near the door.

The brothers who lived in the apartment over his were usually pretty quiet (well, one of them was, and if it was the loud one the crashing would have been peppered with liberal "FUCK!"s). Ryan had no actual idea how to fight or fend off an attacker, but he tended not to get fucked with, given his broad-shouldered, tall frame. He shut his apartment, making sure he had his key before he let it lock behind him, holding the bat in front of him as he headed to the stairs. The boys' apartment door was standing wide open.

"...What kind of trouble have you gotten yourselves into?" Ryan muttered, grip twisting on the handle of his bat as he stepped into the open door.

"Hello?" he called stupidly. "I'm going to call the co--" His eyebrows shot up and his grip faltered on the bat for a second. A decidedly male figure in a hoodie pulled down so that his face was obscured (he might even have been wearing a mask, Ryan wasn't sure) stepped out of the bedroom. "Where are they?" Ryan asked, trying not to let his voice tremble. The hooded figure tilted his head as if to say "who?" or possibly "who the fuck are you?" He clearly wasn't here for tea, and the thought of someone coming after the two brothers made Ryan's blood boil. They weren't any older than Ray had been, laying in that hospital bed, hanging on just long enough to hold Ryan's hand in his weakened grip. The image was one that had haunted him constantly since that day. He swore he heard a flatline sometimes when he was alone in the silence of his apartment.

More than anything, the idea of this hooded figure coming here to shatter another pair of lives, plus their parents and siblings and anyone who loved them, _pissed Ryan off_. He let out a roar and charged, bat reared back for a swing. The man lifted his hand and caught the bat, the thick wood snapping over his forearm like a matchstick.

"Holy shit," Ryan said, before a strong hand shot out and wrapped around his throat, squeezing. Inhuman strength lifted him off the ground, and he felt his face heating up with blood as he dropped the bat to claw at the unrelenting hand around his throat. His vision blurred and blackened into white flashes and shadowy spots, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

And then he kicked forward and found the hooded figure's groin with his foot, and suddenly he was dropped and he fell to the ground, panting for breath as the hooded figure grunted and clutched his injured junk. Ryan scrambled to get away, finding the handle half of the bat and holding it in front of him like a broken bottle. The attacker was out of commission for less time than Ryan expected, surging forward and slamming into Ryan full force. Ryan flew backward, felt the hard, cold impact of glass against his back and then felt it give into thousands of tiny splinters as he found himself suddenly dropping through thin air.

Four stories is a long way to fall, but it felt like no time at all before he hit the pavement outside. He felt his ribs crack, opened his mouth to scream and felt blood spray from his throat, broken back arching in a paroxysm of agony. It was so much that after a second it faded to a haze of pain, and he felt like he was almost floating, helpless to do anything but watch as the hooded figure appeared in the apartment window and looked down at him.

The figure jumped, landing unhurt on his feet a couple yards away from where Ryan was writhing in pain, and dimly Ryan realized that he hadn't stood a chance from the start. The hooded figure approached Ryan with the handle of the broken bat in his hand, standing over him again with that tilted head and unreadable expression.

Then he raised the jagged, splintered wood over his head and brought it down hard into Ryan's stomach, and what started as pinpricks of pain through his shirt became a tearing agony as the jagged edges opened the way for the whole handle to force its way through his flesh. Ryan hissed and nearly choked, blood spraying through his teeth. The hooded figure changed his grip on the handle of the bat and gave it a hard twist, burying it that much deeper in Ryan's gut. The last sound out of his mouth was a gargling, agonized scream. In the silence of the killer's ragged breaths, Ryan could almost swear he could faintly hear a flatline.

_I'll see you soon, Ray._

And then Ryan's world went blissfully, painlessly dark.


	4. Michael I

It’s never been odd to not have Kdin at home. His brother is a busy medium- a single parent who has to keep them both fed and keep a roof over their heads. They don’t see much of each other and neither of them complain about it. It’s not a bad life. Well, it’s not a bad life for whatever they could have as mediums who were hated by pretty much everyone they ever met. Oh you can see dead people? Congratulations, here’s half the community wanting to lynch you for being a witch. Most of the other half are going to pretend your ‘illusions’ don’t exist and talk down to you, while still wanting you to use your powers to tell them what their great aunt had for breakfast the day she died. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.  


Sort of makes it hard for most mediums to find steady jobs. Even Kdin tended to bounce around- having to travel from city to city sometimes. So being home alone was nothing new to Michael. He was a big boy, he could take care of himself, and it wasn’t like he’d starve. Kdin would be back eventually, they’d talk about how people were fucking assholes, and then he’d leave again. That’s what Michael thinks the day he gets home to a note on the fridge- that Kdin’s just gone city hopping for another job and he’ll be back soon. He doesn’t so much as look at the post it note, opting to ignore it and open the fridge to grab something to eat instead.  


When a week’s passed and he hasn’t got a phone call, however, he finally takes the time to read the note. It doesn’t tell him where Kdin is. It doesn’t tell him when his brother will come home, doesn’t remind him not to use up all the electricity, doesn’t tell him that for the last time stop eating Kdin’s damn pretzels. All it tells him is that Kdin is sorry for something he won’t say and warns him not to tell anyone he can see ghosts. Michael scoffs at it, rolling his eyes. Yes, because that’s always worked so well for them before why wouldn’t he go screaming it from the rooftops now? He takes the note to the police station that night, and files a missing persons report.  


Or at least tries to. The cops won’t listen to him for a second. The accuse him of being some teenage kid who’s trying to prank them. Michael is in his twenties. His ID even fucking tells them that, but they just won’t quit. He gives up two seconds short of yelling at them and heads home- he’ll find Kdin himself if they’re not going to do shit. There’s got to be something more at home- maybe he can convince a dog to help stalk the fucker out. The thought doesn’t stay in his head long, however, because there’s even more cops outside his apartment complex. The window to their apartment is broken, the ambulance has yet to turn off it’s damn sirens despite being parked, and there’s glass everywhere. For a moment, Michael panics that something’s happened to Kdin- that his brother came back only to end up falling out a window or being attacked. He walks closer to discover the gleam of a ghost and has to swallow heavily.  


It’s not Kdin.  


He doesn’t know the guy. Not personally. He’s pretty sure that the dude lived in the complex too, but they’d never shared any words beyond a polite “excuse me”. There’s a hole through his ghostly stomach and Michael felt sorry for him. It’s a painful way to go, and messy as shit too. He was so caught up in the relief that the ghost wasn’t Kdin he forgot to look away immediately. Ghost didn’t know you could see them unless they caught you looking or you told them. They were almost worse than the living about mediums too- they’d refuse to believe they were dead or they would rope you into delivering the last words. Neither was fun to deal with, and Michael realized he had no idea if the ghost had seen him staring. Fuck.  


Quickly, he made his way around the cops and into the building. Even if they were there he still had to grab his shit. Still had to look for some better clue where Kdin was than an apology note. He didn’t find anything- besides the pictures it was almost like Kdin’s existence had been wiped from the apartment already. Even the calender was gone. The only thing he did find in the apartment, was a ghost who had most definitely noticed him staring.


	5. Jack II

Jack doesn’t think twice when it comes to helping Geoff. The man’s his partner, his best friend, and his love. He’d do anything for him, even if the man didn’t ask or want him to. Which was why after Jack and Burnie had spent nearly an hour calling Geoff to the crime scene when he finally appeared with chalk down his front and scrapes on his palms, he knew the Luna case had to run cold. For the first time since joining the police force, Jack tampered with the evidence and left nothing of any value behind.

"I’m _so_ sorry." He whispered to the young boy’s corpse, the guilt gathering in the back of his mind. The kid deserved justice, but Jack refused to let it be served. Not at the price it’d cost.

Never did he regret it. His partner needed to be protected, to be swept into safety and taken care of. It’d been clear since Geoff had trained him the man needed someone to do that for him. Jack had just been someone who was lucky enough to step in. Even when Geoff turned to alcohol after the Luna Case went cold, he took care of him. He’d find whatever bar Geoff had holed himself into, sit down, let him rant it out until he’d begin repeating, and cut his supply off. Then he’d take the man home, leave him in bed without his shoes on, and place a glass of water and two aspirin next to his bed for when he woke up.

Jack hated it, but he never complained. He didn’t do anything but take care of him, because that’s all he could do. He couldn’t give back what the Luna Case had taken away. He couldn’t take the alcohol away from Geoff completely. He couldn’t do anything but offer companionship, care- and his life.

When Jack heard the first shot, he’d turned and watch some kid who couldn’t be older than 25 fall. His hand flew to his own gun as he quickly identified the shooter. There was no chance to draw it, however, because the attacker had their gun aimed right at Geoff’s head as the man knelt. Jack moved without thinking about it. He wouldn’t let Geoff die. He couldn’t let Geoff die. Jack took a shot to the chest.

It hurt. It hurt so much he could barely breathe as he staggered backwards and then fell from the force of the shot. Geoff was at his side immediately. His partner knelt next to him, his hands flying to apply pressure to the wound. There were no more shots after Jack got hit, so he smiled as he looked up at the other. Geoff was safe. He appeared to be hyperventilating and maybe panicking, but he was safe.

"Ge..Geoff." Jack spluttered out, each word feeling like it scraped against his throat.

"Shut up. Don’t talk. You’re going to be fine. An ambulance is on it’s way and you’re not allowed to die on me, Pattillo." Geoff ordered, hands pressing harder against his chest. He could almost feel Geoff’s hands against his ribs.

"I-I…" He coughed, ignoring the fluid that came up. "I need you to breathe. You’re gonna..pass out."

Jack doesn’t remember if Geoff answers. All he remembers is smiling at the knowledge Geoff would live, and closing his eyes. Then it’d been darkness. A sweet release from the pain that’d kept him. He regretted not saying “I love you”. He regretted not saying “I am sorry”. He regretted not telling Geoff it wasn’t his fault. He regretted never taking the time to properly take care of Geoff and get him to a professional to help with the alcoholism.

Jack had so many regrets by the time he’d seen again. 

Geoff was still kneeling next to his body when the paramedics finally came. Jack didn’t make it. Neither did the kid who’d been shot before him. The kid didn’t stick around. He flickered away and it made Jack look down at himself. There was a hole between the bottom of his ribs, just above his stomach, and he was transparent. With how the paramedics were covering his face, he doubted he was having an out of body experience. So he was a ghost. He tried to comfort Geoff, but the man couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t touch him either. For the first time in a very, very long time, Jack felt useless. He couldn’t even nudge the sheet that lay over his dead body. Ghosts, apparently, can cry.

Unsure of what else to do, he followed Geoff like a lost puppy. Despite everything that said otherwise, the man still went to the hospital and waited for some news of him. Jack felt his heart break a little more at the sight. There was blood- his own blood- all over Geoff’s hands and it was getting into his hair because he kept running his hands nervously through it. Knowing he couldn’t actually touch the man didn’t stop him from running his hand over the man’s cheek and pretending that he could. Geoff looked absolutely wretched by the time the doctors came out to confirm what they’d both already known. 

They both left the hospital, and Jack found that Geoff’s response to death hadn’t changed. He frowned as the man approached a bar, asked for whatever they could give him fastest, and drank alcohol like he was a drowning fish and it was water. Jack couldn’t do shit but watch as he poisoned himself and refused to leave until he was swaying on his feet. The last time he’d seen him so wasted, he’d been picking him up after getting a midnight call begging him to and telling him not to ask questions. The force gave Geoff two weeks, and he did not go to Jack’s funeral. Jack wondered if it was a good service, but he didn’t want to go either. Seeing his own dead body once had been enough. Through the first few days they gained a pattern. Geoff drank anything in reach, and Jack fought to learn how to move things. It took him a week before he felt he could finally do much of anything. 

On the 9th day since his death, Jack knocked over Geoff’s drink. The foul smelling liquid spilt all over the bar counter and pissed off the bartender who cut Geoff off. Maybe he couldn’t touch Geoff, but he could still try to help. He couldn’t stop everything though. There’d been some terrifying moments Jack was certain he’d see Geoff’s death and have no way to stop it because he was just a fucking ghost.

When Geoff returned to work, he didn’t look any better than he’d been when he was told Jack was dead. His new partner though, Jack was rather fond of. Caleb was a sweet kid, and would be good to Geoff where he couldn’t be anymore. Even though Caleb couldn’t hear him either, he would thank him at the end of each shift for keeping the man safe. It only lasted a week, and at the end of it when Geoff resigned Jack felt like his world was being shaken. He’d never imagined Geoff quitting the force like this. Maybe quitting to be a Dad. Maybe quitting to live a happy life with a family in some odd corner of the world- but never because he simply couldn’t keep at the job without Jack.

He didn’t care about the guy who shot him. If he hung himself, then he had gotten away with killing an innocent bystander. Poor kid was probably being missed by his loved ones right now. Idly, Jack wondered who it was that had to tell his own family he was dead. Had any of them tried to reach out? Had they come for his funeral? Had they given long speeches none of them would have actually said if he’d been there? He missed them, but he’d been away from them so long it didn’t feel like anything new from death. 

Jack wasn’t sure if he wanted to cry or laugh the day Geoff bought a bar. There wasn’t already enough access to alcohol for him? Wasn’t enough temptation to drown his problems? Fuck, how many more times would Jack catch him drinking straight out of the bottle if he was going to have his own bar full of this shit? Sighing, Jack went to follow Geoff inside only to find out he couldn’t. Shocked by the pain that over took him when he tried, he stared at Geoff helplessly and lost. Trying again only got the same pain, and even if he tried to push through it he couldn’t get inside. It wouldn’t let him inside. Desperately he tried the back door, any open windows, anything that would get him inside. None of them got him any closer to Geoff, all just started to tear at him. Near crying, he placed his hand on the window to feel the burn of failing his partner, watching said partner stock a bar. There’d be no stopping Geoff in there.

Despite his worries, the bar did the man good. Geoff was coping. Moving on and living without him. And even though it was what Jack wanted, it hurt. He needed to move on too. To come to terms with being dead, with being unable to do anything more, but he couldn’t and stayed outside the bar day after day just in case. Maybe this was the closest thing he could do- maybe this was how he was coping. Jack had always said he believed that the dead watched over the living…

Somehow he’d always imagined it a lot less frustrating and literal than this.


	6. Ryan II

Ryan came to to flashing red and blue lights behind his eyelids. In the neighborhood he lived in, it wasn't that unusual a sight, but what was unusual was when he opened his eyes not to his lumpy couch and dingy apartment, but to the night air. He realized he couldn't feel the wind over his skin as he sat up, looking around. There were police cars and an ambulance circled around the front of his apartment in a protective barrier, officers in uniform crowded around and talking amongst themselves. Ryan jumped to his feet and ran over.

"Hey!" he called. "What's going on?"

"Jesus," one of the officers said. "Did you see what happened to that guy?"

"The ME's going to have a field day with this one," another agreed, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head.

"What happened?" Ryan asked. The officers ignored him. He huffed and stormed around them, up to the cluster of officers around a prone body on the ground.

"Jesus Christ," a scruffy, curly-haired man in an Austin PD windbreaker muttered. "What happened to you, dude?" When he crouched down next to the body, Ryan got a good look at the unfortunate for the first time.

A cold jolt ran through him when he saw his own blue eyes, filmy and vacant. A flashbulb went off over his body, and then another, as a man with a camera took photographs of his broken body, of the wooden bat that stuck out of his stomach and felt like a kick in Ryan's. He looked down at his hands, his feet, splayed his fingers over his stomach where he remembered the pain now. Pinpricks of light, like embers buried under his skin, glowed out from his stomach, spreading an ashy shadow outward to overtake Ryan's clothes, his skin, until his body was an ethereal silver aside from the burning brand of the death blow.

"No..."

"The victim's name is Ryan Haywood," a twitchy-looking man said, reading off of his phone. "30 years old. He moved here about a year and a half ago, lived in the apartment right below the one with the broken window."

"No!" Ryan shouted. "Come on, this is a mistake! I'm right here!" he pleaded. The men ignored him. The twitchy-looking one scrolled a little further in his phone, and paused.

"...I knew he looked familiar. Burns, listen to this. Two years ago, it says we took a statement from him after the shooting death of his partner." The man on the ground looked up at him in surprise, pulling his mirrored aviators down to look at the older man.

"The Narvaez boy?" he asked. He looked back down at the body he was crouched next to. "Shit... The world must've really had something against you, dude." The man with the camera moved away, and the crouched man - Detective Burns, Ryan remembered him now, he had been the head detective on Ray's case - reached out and lowered Ryan's eyelids. The older detective standing behind him had gone respectfully silent. Burns stood, still looking down at Ryan's corpse.

"I hope you found him, man," Burns said quietly. "We'll catch the bastard who did this to you."

When Burns turned to walk away, fishing his cell phone out of his pocket, he walked right through Ryan without so much as a shiver. Ryan stood there until a glow as bright as daylight broke through his thoughts.

"Great, here comes the choir of angels," he muttered.

"How come you only call me angel after I'm dead?" a familiar voice asked. Ryan whipped around, staring in shock. Ray stood in front of him, a sad smile on his face and a halo of light around him almost too bright for Ryan to look at for too long. Ryan's silvery ethereal glow paled in comparison.

"Ray..." Ryan murmured. "Holy shit, it's you."

"I missed you too, Rye," Ray said, and that was it, his sad smile, all of it brought Ryan back to the hospital bedside, watching the muscles of his face go slack as the life fled his body. But he looked...so much more than alive, now. As beautiful as Ryan had ever seen him. The golden band around Ray's left ring finger caught the light. Ryan furrowed his brow when Ray glanced away from him, twisting it at the base of his finger. "...But it's not time for you to come with me yet." If he wasn't already dead, Ryan's heart would have stopped cold.

"Wh- what do you mean?" Ryan asked helplessly.

"Ryan- fuck, I'm so sorry. But you're the only one right now who can figure out what the hell's going on," Ray explained. "And it goes back further than you'd think."

"You think... the man who killed me had something to do with y-- with what happened to you?" Ryan asked. "But that's impossible, he- he's dead!" Ray just smiled.

"Don't worry, I know you can figure it out," he said, stepping closer to Ryan. Ryan stared at him, clenched fists trembling at his sides.

"But why me? Why can't I just..." When Ryan reached out toward Ray, the younger stopped just out of arm's reach, a distressingly understanding look on his face.

"You know those boys are still in danger," he said, and Ryan looked away, ashamed that he did. He did, and he thought he was selfish enough not to care. "I know you, Ryan, you were trying to save them tonight. You're too much of a good guy to be ready to rest without knowing they're okay. And hurry, alright? I've been waiting long enough for your sorry ass," he added lightly. Ryan's throat caught around imagined tears, making a sound halfway between a barking laugh and a sob. Ray cupped his cheek in his left hand, and then brought the other up so he could pull Ryan's head down to kiss his forehead.

"I love you," Ryan whispered.

"I know," Ray said. "I love you too. I'll be waiting for you. So be careful, dumbass. I didn't wait this long to lose you."

"I'll hurry," Ryan promised. When he reached out for Ray, the boy slipped through his fingers, fading back into the daylight-bright glow that had brought him. His radiant smile was the last thing Ryan saw before he disappeared. When he was gone, Ryan found himself staring at the place where he'd just been, a chill that hadn't been there before seeping into his bones.

"I'll hurry," he repeated.

It was then that his eyes met the curly-haired boy's, and he realized with a start that the boy - his neighbor, the loud one, one of the kids he'd died trying to protect - was looking right at him.

"Hey, wait!" he called, but the boy (Michael?) had already disappeared into the crowd around the apartment. When Ryan realized that Michael was probably headed to the apartment, Ryan looked up at the broken window. He jumped to see if he had the ability to fly, now that he was a ghost.

No dice. With a groan of frustration, he headed for the fire escape, spectral feet soundlessly pounding the rickety metal as he raced to beat Michael to the top.

The police collecting evidence in the apartment couldn't see him, but they could see Michael, so it took an extra minute for him to sneak past. But as the cops filed out, Michael snuck in, rifling through the wreckage.

"They're probably still investigating that," Ryan said dryly. That was when Michael noticed him. He stared at the ghost for a second before swiping his beanie off to angrily ruffle his auburn curls.

"FUCK!" the sudden invective shocked Ryan perhaps less than it should've. "Alright, spit it out," the boy said angrily. "Hit me with it - what, you want me to feed your goldfish?"

"I want you to help me figure out who killed me," Ryan said.

"Go fuck yourself," Michael said.

"Charming. Look, it's for your benefit too, okay? I got killed because I heard someone banging around up here looking for you." That got Michael to stop, although he didn't look at Ryan. "I don't know why you can see me, but since you can it would probably be in your best interest as well as mine for us to work together." Michael glowered at him.

"Why are dead people so fucking annoying?" he asked with a groan of resignation. Ryan smirked.

"Because we have so much free time and nothing to do but come up with ways to annoy you personally."

"Shut the fuck up. You've been dead like, what, 15 minutes?"

"Well, probably more like an hour or two," Ryan remarked. "Even if you don't wanna help me, you should still probably get the fuck out of here. I don't know all that much about murderers, but I get the feeling if he were coming for me he would've stopped one floor down." Michael glanced down at his backpack, and then shoved past Ryan to grab a spare t-shirt and a couple pairs of underwear.

"Nice," Ryan said. "Thinking ahead. You should always wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident."

"Yeah? How'd that clean underwear treat you down there on the pavement?"

"Ouch, you are just running on all cylinders tonight, aren't you?"

"You're not really making a great case for the whole 'me wanting to help you' thing, you know." Ryan sighed and ran a spectral hand through his hair, trying not to notice how it glowed silver out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah, I might've...started off on the wrong foot there. It has really not been a good day. I'm Ryan." Michael glanced at him with a glimmer of...interest? Then he shook his head and shouldered his backpack.

"Tell me about it," he grumbled. "...Michael." When Michael walked right past him - past him, not through him, he noticed the way the boy gave his incorporeal body a wide berth - Ryan stepped in front of him.

"Hey, wait," he said. Michael swerved around him again. "Listen- aren't you going to help me?"

"Rule number one," Michael hissed under his breath, when Ryan followed him out of the apartment and into the hallway. "I don't want to hear any more of your sob story than I have to. You keep your shit on a need to know basis, and I'll let you know if there's something I need to know." Ryan's brow furrowed, but he followed behind as Michael headed up the stairs.

"Rule number two," Michael said, as they passed the fifth floor. "Do not talk to me in front of other ghosts. If they see me talking to your dead ass, they'll know that I'm a fucking medium, and fucking ghosts are a million times more goddamn annoying than living people about this shit."

"Noted," Ryan said dryly.

"...And rule number three," Michael said, pushing open the door to the roof. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I've got someone I'm looking for, and if this shit's connected then you need to help me find him."

"Your brother?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, my brother. His name is Kdin, and he's a medium like I am. Figure I should explain that part since you seem to be the only person on the block who didn't know that before he died." Michael gave him another one of those semi-interested looks. Ryan shrugged under the boy's scrutiny.

"I never thought about it," he said. "I guess I was just caught up in my own shit." Michael's brown eyes narrowed, before he shook his head.

"Yeah, well," he said. "Don't be fucking obnoxious about it, alright?" He went over and climbed up onto the waist-high concrete railing.

"Michael, what the fuck!" Ryan yelped. Michael crouched and sprang forward, arms outstretched. He hit the next roof over with an "oof!", cradling his arms over it and scrabbling to get his feet over, sitting with his back to the wall and panting a little. Ryan looked around, trying to figure out how he was going to follow him across the six foot jump when he didn't have a physical body to grab onto the ledge with. He saw a wisp of fog on the edge of the building, and went near it, surprised at how completely it hid his hand when he reached out.

"That used to be a ghost," Michael chimed in from the next rooftop over. Ryan shuddered at the implication. When he closed his eyes and stepped into the mist, suddenly he could see them all over the place. There was one on the roof with Michael, not on the edge. And suddenly, Ryan was in that one instead. He opened his eyes and reformed himself, a full-body shiver running down his spine.

"Okay, I've never seen someone do that before," Michael said.

"Yeah, well you're not going to see it again anytime soon," Ryan said. "What the hell did you jump over here for?"

"Because this fire escape is outside of the police barricade," Michael said calmly. "Ours wasn't."

"...Oh," Ryan said. "Okay, then." He followed Michael over to the fire escape and watched him start to climb down, before floating through the parapet and down after him. "One more question."

"Oh god, here we go."

"Why are you helping me?" Michael froze so abruptly it was almost like a record scratch. "I mean, you're clearly not excited about it. And if it's just so I can help you find your brother, I _do_ want to help you, but I have to get my shit done because I kind of made a promise..." Michael rubbed the sleeve of his hoodie across his nose and sighed.

"Yeah, I _do_ want you to help me find Kdin," he said. "But... never mind, it's stupid." He turned and started stomping back down the metal stairs. Ryan followed soundlessly behind him.

"What's stupid? Michael, come on." When Michael whirled to face him again, his freckled cheeks were flushed.

"You got killed for me! Alright?" he snapped. "That's why I'm helping you. You were a nice, quiet, normal guy, who got your shit fucking brutally murdered because your neighbors were a couple of freakshows!" Michael scrunched his shoulders and hid his eyes behind the mop of curls that stuck out from under his beanie. Ryan reached out to comfort him before he realized that he couldn't touch him, and the wave of helplessness hurt.

"You're not a freakshow, Michael," he said, trying to keep his own voice level. "The only freakshow here is the bastard who did this." Michael's shoulders hitched, and he shook his head, trembling like a hurricane in a teapot. "It's not your fault," he said. "It's _not_ ," he insisted, when Michael shook his head so hard his curls bobbed. Michael brought his hands up to fist in his knit beanie, and ripped it off his head.

"FFFFUCK!" he screamed, spiking it on the ground. Ryan jumped at the sudden outburst. Michael wiped his face on his sleeve again, sniffled loudly, and then picked his beanie up.

"...Michael?" Ryan called, tentatively following him when he leapt over five stairs down to the next landing, landing with a thunderous clatter.

"Don't talk to me in public," Michael said acidly, then cleared all the way down to the landing after that.

"Maybe if you quit rampaging around like a herd of elephants, I wouldn't have to!" Ryan snapped. "Michael, where the hell are you going?"

"Away from you!" Michael called back over his shoulder.

"Why? What did I say?" Silence. Ryan stopped in the middle of the street, made an incoherent growl with accompanying strangling motion, and threw his hands in the air before he jogged after Michael again.

"We need a lead," Michael said, when Ryan had gotten close to him again. As they got further out of the dodgy end of town, Ryan noticed that more and more buildings had ornate glowing doors and walls, almost like there were ghost buildings still occupying the spaces where the new ones stood.

"What's all that?" Ryan asked.

"That," Michael said, "is what I meant by 'away from you'. Ghosts can't pass through those unless a door or a window is opened for you."

"Oh well lucky me, then," Ryan drawled. "And pray tell, why did you choose the most warded part of town?"

"Because I know a guy," Michael said.

"Don't tell me- he's an exorcist."

"Funny," Michael said flatly. "He's a former cop." Michael stopped in front of a corner building that was lit up like a Christmas tree with holy (Ryan assumed it was holy, if it warded off ghosts) energy. He could barely make out the "real" sign underneath all the barrier.

"'The Bearded Lion'?" Ryan asked. "Lions don't have beards, they have manes-" he saw a ghost standing at the window to the bar, staring inside. He was wearing a policeman's uniform, and had a single glowing hole in his chest. From this angle and distance, his expression was obscured almost entirely by the thick beard that covered his face. Ryan scratched his own spectral five-o-clock shadow. "...Oh," he whispered, unconsciously lowering his voice so as not to attract the other ghost's attention. Michael followed his gaze and visibly tensed, a pained expression crossing his features.

"Yeah," he whispered back. "'Oh.' Don't forget rule two," he reminded him sharply, before he ran to the door of the bar, leaving Ryan alone with the other ghost.

 


End file.
